GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) vs GeForce GT 310

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 310, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 589 MHz. The DDR2 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific card. It features 16 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 310		31 Watts
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		47 Watts
	Difference: 16 Watts (52%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 310 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 310		16000 MB/sec
GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) will be quite a bit (approximately 83%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 310. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		8640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 310		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3928 (83%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GS (OEM) is a lot (more or less 83%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 310, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GS (OEM)		4320 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 310		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1964 (83%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.